Walnut Creek Completes Smart Weather Irrigation and Native Fescue Conversion at Boundary Oak Golf Course

Agronomy managers at the City of Walnut Creek's Boundary Oak Golf Course and water-efficiency engineers from the City of Walnut Creek Public Works Department completed an eighteen-acre turf-reduction and precision irrigation modernization on Saturday morning at 3800 Valley Vista Road in the Lime Ridge foothills. Approved by the Walnut Creek City Council under the Municipal Water Conservation and Climate Action Plan, the $480,000 project converts out-of-play irrigated Kentucky bluegrass roughs across nine holes into low-water California native bentgrass, Idaho fescue, and purple needlegrass meadows that require zero summer irrigation once established. Along Pine Creek tributaries traversing the course, crews also planted 450 native milkweed and coyote mint plugs to expand monarch butterfly and red-tailed hawk foraging habitat.

Across the remaining fairways and greens, irrigation technicians replaced 620 legacy hydraulic sprinkler heads with individually addressable two-wire decoder rotors linked to thirty-six wireless subsurface soil-moisture, salinity, and temperature probes. Controlled by an on-site evapotranspiration weather station, the central pump house adjusts overnight watering runtimes down to the individual sprinkler head based on slope aspect, wind speed, and afternoon sun exposure.

In coordination with the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, engineers also upgraded the Valley Vista booster station filters to maximize off-peak tertiary recycled water storage in the course's upper irrigation ponds. Together, the native fescue conversion and precision nozzle retrofit are projected to save 24 million gallons of water per year while reducing pump electricity consumption by 19 percent.

The $480,000 improvement was financed entirely through the Boundary Oak Golf Enterprise Fund paired with $115,000 in commercial turf-conversion rebates from EBMUD and the California Department of Water Resources. Residents can view public walking trail connections around the Lime Ridge perimeter or book tee times and youth First Tee clinics on the Boundary Oak Golf Course Official Portal.